It's fantastic that Google plans to switch to renewables since they are one of the biggest players. Definitely an exaggeration to say that they are leading the charge. Apple was among the first to make renewables an issue and achieved 100% in data centers back in 2013, with little fanfare.

http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/design-buil...

And creating a subsidiary that's a power company is table stakes:

https://9to5mac.com/2016/06/09/apple-energy-company/

Google is a much much larger energy consumer, has been carbon neutral since 2007, and is going to use 100% renewables globally within the next year.

Also, Google made its energy company play back in 2010. Apple made theirs in 2016.

https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/10/22Apple-Launches-Ne...

From Google's 2016 energy report: "And in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations..."

http://qz.com/342240/apple-is-building-a-massive-farm-of-sol...

That seems implausible. The electrical requirements of Aluminum production are extreme. Obviously there's a lot of issues about where one draws the line between the company and its subcontractors and so on, but it seems hard to believe Apple's global energy footprint is not higher than Google's

When we measure our carbon footprint, we include hundreds of suppliers, millions of customers, and hundreds of millions of devices. And we’re always looking for ways to make the biggest difference in five major areas: manufacturing, product use, facilities, transportation, and recycling.

[1] http://www.apple.com/environment/climate-change/

Then lets do a back of the envelope calculation for energy consumption for Apple's aluminum use.

Very roughly Apple sells ~25 million macs and ~200 million iphones per year. Again lets assume that it needs 2kg of aluminum for macbooks and 100g for phones (not all iphones are aluminum and this might be lower), that makes ~70 thousand metric tonnes of aluminum.

Modern smelters use 13KW/h to produce 1 kilogram of aluminum, but their production involves recycled aluminum (and possibly shavings from milling?) so number should be lower, lets say it is 10KWH per kilo.

This makes 70M*10KWh = 700GW/h year

Google's datacenter energy consumption, is difficult to guess, if there are 1 million servers, and assuming each server consumes 10KWH per day, then it makes ~3.5 TWH per year.

This is apples to oranges of course, aluminum vs server running energy costs, but still kinda implies that Google uses more energy, at least directly.

FWIW, the linked article mentions

> The 5.7 terawatt-hours of electricity Google consumed in 2015 “is equal to the output of two 500 megawatt coal plants,” said Jonathan Koomey

though they don't mention the source

Likewise, you couldn't just keep buying big batteries from third parties to power all your needs, and claim to have no carbon footprint because you didn't make the batteries.

USGS has online reports.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/rec... 40% ~2001

For 2015, it looks as of 30% of supply came via recycling: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/mc...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...

But the energy used, carbon emitted, is fairly small for the 1000 or so flights they take relative to the aggregate benefit they're making by buying so much "cleaner" power.

You really ought consider the relative perspective, I don't think their 757 carbon impact compares to the output of a 5MW data center running 24/7.

"A Boeing 747 jet has an average power consumption of 140 megawatts."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)

You can use this link to see San Francisco's power usage in 2015: http://ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbycounty.aspx

It was almost exactly 140 megawatts/hour * 24 hours * 365 days.

I highly doubt Google's worldwide data centers use more power than all of SF.

So, not silly!

MW/h doesn't make any sense. A unit of power would be MW, a unit of energy would be MWh (megawatt times hour, not divided by hour). MW/h would be a power increase over time, which is surely not what the parent means.

[1] Unless they're in the US, Liberia or Myanmar. :)

Google is purchasing 2600GW of renewable energy as of Nov 2016, while Apple is purchasing around 150GW.

For example, Apple's global power consumption definitely includes power used in manufacturing, a problem that Google externalizes from this sort of computation.

Every other phone or tablet sold in the E.U. has a sensible power adaptor, usually the mini USB flavour. Apple though, they don't think the law applies to them, or at least not the spirit of the law, so they keep churning out these Apple only power adaptors complete with the cables that fray and break a lot easier than normal cables.

Sure the data centres may be green but the landfill is not. Meanwhile, Google (who have far larger and more useful data centres) have been providing E.U. compliant power adaptors (or lack of) since the first Nexus phones, if not a long time before.

Nonetheless, framing ones' opinion of Apple's sustainability practices on this one pet issue seems quite myopic. The actual sustainability complaint stems from the alleged poor durability, not the choice of connection; but even if we accept that criticism, replacing charging cables occasionally seems like small drop in the bucket vs. the company's environmental impact as a whole.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Mini_and_micro_connectors

That's different than switching to a new energy source.

A Google datacenter near the Columbia River may derive 100% of it's energy from hydro. Google pioneered that practice and many others followed. But their overall real estate footprint relies heavily on local energy suppliers, which may be coal.

Any company making a claim of being 100% renewable, is basically just using offsets.

And offsets are a way the government allows companies to (metaphorically) continue driving down the road in gas-guzzling SUVs, but make investments in renewable energy to offset their footprint.

You argue that by being physically near the Columbia river, a hydro electric plant can be constructed which generates power and sends it directly to a Google data center. But their other properties, some of which are nearer power plants which generate power using fossil fuels can not be considered to be using renewable energy. Is that about right?

If so, I see it a bit differently, if Google builds a concentrated solar plant in the Mohave Desert and that plant puts adds 1200MWhrs of energy to the Western Grid every month, and Google's real estate in California consume 1000MWhrs of energy from the grid every month, I can see that being claimed as using 100% renewable energy. There isn't a specific path of the electrons to the Google buildings but in that scenario Google will have added more energy through renewable sources into the grid than they extracted from the grid[1]

I've got Solar panels on my house and they generate more power during the day than I can use, they generate no power at night. I have them connected to the grid. When I'm generating excess power its probably being used by my neighbors but somewhere nearby a fossil fuel plant is using less fuel because of the power I am feeding into the grid.

Because is is set up this way, PG&E bills me on an annual basis and on that basis the 'net' amount of energy my house uses is quite small, in terms of ratios, over 90% of my total electrical energy usage is accounted for by the energy I generate on my rooftop. I think of that as "90%" of my energy comes from renewable sources, even though every night, at that moment, I'm using fossil fuel sources (or simply the grid). Once I have a couple of PowerWall's install it will get a bit more explicit but I consider both interpretations valid. I'm guessing from your argument that you do not.

[1] You can also argue that the 2nd law of thermodynamics tells us that adding it and then removing it will leave a bit behind so perhaps a draw of 1MWhr might need an input of 1.2MWr in order to offset grid losses to radiation and heat.

Frankly I don't think anyone should. It's mental gymnastics to be able to say you aren't using dirty energy when you really are.

Let me illustrate with an example of why you can't get by with 'offsets'.

Let's say Arizona is running on 80 GW natural gas and 20 GW solar. Google wants to build in Virginia, which relies heavily on coal.

So they bring online a 2 GW datacenter in Virginia which is powered by a 2 GW increase in coal burning. They "offset" it by building 2 GW of solar in Arizona, which scales back natural gas by 2 GW.

The result of their 'clean offset' has been the conversion of 2 GW natural gas to 2 GW of coal, which is significantly worse for the environment.

Would it help if the renewable source had to be connected to the same grid-tie (there are 4 I think in the US) ? Then you're putting renewable energy into the same grid you are pulling it out of.

What if your solar plant in Arizona use the Fischer–Tropsch to make fuel, then you drove it in a tanker across the country and poured it into generators in Virginia?

The way I see it is that watts are watts (just like dollars are dollars) so if the total watts you burn are offset by renewable watts you have put in, then you are ahead. If everyone does that then by definition the entire grid is running on renewable energy.

Right, but they aren't connected to the same grid. Google has datacenters all over the world, connected to all sorts of different grids with different source compositions.

>What if your solar plant in Arizona use the Fischer–Tropsch to make fuel, then you drove it in a tanker across the country and poured it into generators in Virginia?

Sure, but you have to account for the emissions from that whole process as well (emissions of solar + emissions of generating the fuel + emissions of transportation + emissions of burning the fuel).

>The way I see it is that watts are watts (just like dollars are dollars)

Nope, a watt generated on one grid does not spend on another because they're not all interconnected.

Until we solve the energy storage problem, the problem is exacerbated further by continually expanding solar installations in one particular region of the US that will generate more than the consumption for part of the day.

I guess nuclear power is non-renewable but carbon neutral. Cannot think of anything that is not carbon neutral but renewable...wouldn't that require creating CO2 matter from nothing?

1. Net usage after selling off excess energy 2. Net usage assuming there is no demand for excess when you have it (maybe everyone on the grid has solar panels)

Achieving 100% in #1 is great and I applaud Google for it. If everyone did this we could drastically reduce overall usage of fossil fuels, but I believe the fear is that people won't know the distinction and will assume "if everyone does what Google does we will all be 100% renewable" and that isn't true.

That is the definition of 100% renewable energy use is it not? You can't push power into a grid if nobody is using it, they don't work that way. So if the world is using 12.3 TW and 12.3TW is being generated by renewable sources, your done.

What about the consumers of my excess energy? Are they operating at 20% renewable and 80% fossil?

If my 20% in excess is counted towards my total renewable energy consumption, and other consumers also claim that 20% towards their renewable consumption, then we're just double counting. No?

I think the lesson learned from that scandal is to keep it simple. On a per grid basis, simply acknowledge that fossil fuel accounts for X% of power, and rally the community behind an honest metric.

Headlines claiming 100% "mission accomplished" will lull most people into a false perception.

Don't get me wrong, it is a good thing they are doing at least this much... but in my opinion they are getting a huge, undeserved PR boon out of this. Companies like Oracle could not get away with this, even if they tried. In my eyes, and until hard evidence is presented to disproof this, I think they are still milking all the goodwill from the "don't be evil" motto from yesteryear.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/greenpower/green-power-partnership-natio...

(I still think their goal and actions are admirable. There are many companies that have been jump started by a major customer pre-buying a product so the company can ramp up manufacturing to fulfill that and other orders. I much prefer this model over government-driven investment as I have more confidence this demonstrates true demand.)

Also that chart is US-only, while the story about Google here is that Google will go 100% renewable energy globally.

Capturing and burning the methane "downgrades" the potency of the emissions, now only emitting CO2.

Also, if done sustainably, you have to keep sustaining life forms that keep doing the photosyntesis trick for you every year. i.e. All those carbon atoms in this year's crop of Christmas Trees were in the atmosphere a couple of years ago, and we are potentially breathing out at least part of the crops from the next few years... But if someone goes and cuts down a big chunk of the Amazonas in order to make "bio-fuels", yeah, that's dishonest, stupid and self defeating.